Editorial: The dark side of economic dependency on oil

Friday

Apr 30, 2010 at 12:01 AMApr 30, 2010 at 7:59 AM

When one lives in a low-lying hurricane-prone area of the nation, as Louisiana residents do, one learns to deal with natural disasters. Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Andrew, Betsy, Audrey. Need we say more? Louisianans' fate is to also have to deal with man-made disasters.

When one lives in a low-lying hurricane-prone area of the nation, as Louisiana residents do, one learns to deal with natural disasters.

Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Andrew, Betsy, Audrey. Need we say more?

Louisianans' fate is to also have to deal with man-made disasters.

Louisiana’s economy is almost as dependent upon the oil industry as West Virginia is upon the coal industry.

Like it or not, economically, the state is dependent on one horse, oil, for survival. And residents have little influence over this industry.

When oil is down (remember 1983), Louisianans find themselves beating a dead horse. When oil rocks, they have jobs and the state takes in a little money.

Living off oil can be a bumpy, unpredictable ride, but the state has yet to make serious attempt to diversify its economy and break away.

The dependency on oil has other drawbacks. The network of channels dredged throughout south Louisiana by oil companies for their operations have contributed mightily to the coastal erosion that has made the state so vulnerable to storms.

Has the oil industry ever compensated Louisianans for its dredging operations that have altered the nature of the state’s coastline? Has Exxon-Mobil ever paid the billions of dollars in fines it owes from the Exxon-Valdez spill 21 years ago?

Now, out in the Gulf of Mexico, 16 miles off Louisiana's ruggedly beautiful coastline, an oil slick 600 square miles in size is headed toward the Pass-a-Loutre Wildlife Management Area at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

The massive spill is the result of oil rig explosion off the coast that injured rig workers and left 16 of them missing and presumed dead.

The operator of the sunken rig, BP Petroleum, who had been saying about 1,000 gallons of oil was leaking underwater daily from the rig, admitted that spillage could now be as high as 5,000 gallons per day.

Louisiana has been battered by nature relentlessly in recent years, and now the state and neighboring coastal areas face an unprecedented ecological disaster.

It appears Gulf Coast residents will be bearing heavy scars from this huge accident for a long time. Maybe it will give Louisianans reason to re-examine economic ties with oil, and to also pursue profitable relationships with other cleaner industries more willing to work on terms that will benefit the region.